TLDR InfoSec · STRATEGIES & TACTICS

CARELESSNESS VS CRAFTSMANSHIP IN CRYPTOGRAPHY

blog.trailofbits.com6 min read

Summary from the TLDR InfoSec newsletter

Trail of Bits researchers discovered that the widely used pyaes and aes-js packages used default IVs in their documentation, which can lead to vulnerable applications. The team contacted both projects and received no response, but found that the maintainers behind pyaes had dismissed a ticket raised about the vulnerability in 2022. The team contrasted this with StrongMan VPN's response to the team contacting them about their use of the vulnerable pyaes library. The maintainer fully replaced the library and migrated to the more secure GCM-SIV mode of AES.